Review of “Typewriter in the sky”

Book Review – “Typewriter in the Sky” eBook was published in 1995 (yep, that is the date on Amazon, but I think it was more like 2015. The original paper edition was published in 1951 and was written by L. Ron Hubbard (http://www.lronhubbard.org). Mr. Hubbard published 29 novels and numerous short stories.

I received a galley of this novel for review through https://www.netgalley.com. I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains scenes of Violence. While the beginning and end are contemporary, most of the action takes place in the Caribbean of the 1640’s. The primary character is Michael de Wolf, a musician.

Through an unexplained quirk in time, he gets transported to the 1640s in the form of a Spanish Admiral sent to wipe away the French and English. This Admiral is one of the characters in his friends new Fiction novel. From time to time Wolf hears typewriter sounds from the sky (hence the title).

As it turns out he is the villain of the story, pitted against an Englishman who is trying to drive off the Spanish. And of course there is a beautiful, young English woman that has won the hearts of both men to give it a touch of Romance.

Wolf struggles to survive, surprised that he has the skills and knowledge to do so. He also suffers through rewrites where the past is ripped away and his history takes another path.

I thought that this was an interesting read of 2.5 hours. I’m not sure whether to classify this as Science Fiction or Fantasy. Surprisingly, the fact that the novel is more than 65 years old was not overly apparent. Wolf tries to move the story towards a happy conclusion for himself, but he is constantly challenged. The cover art is well chosen for the novel. I give this novel a 3.8 (rounded up to a 4) out of 5.